It wasn’t the day I had planned.
You know those days. The ones where you head out for a little much needed solo date. Time in your favorite coffee shop, a good cup of dark roast coffee, that breakfast sandwich your daughter has been raving about, and time for a little writing. You order your coffee and sandwich, and settle in with your iPad. It’s all going as planned.
Until it isn’t.
The keyboard suddenly won’t work. After 30 minutes the breakfast sandwich still hasn’t appeared. There’s only enough coffee for a half a cup (and what good is the light roast offered in its place, anyway?). When I finally go to inquire about the sandwich, the young barista ignores me for as long as she can, and then responds with a “I’m very busy here, and not really checking on food right now.” I could easily read it as dismissive and a not-so-tiny bit of that invisibility that comes with aging. Or, I could see her as fellow human who probably had more orders than could be handled by one person pulling espresso shots for the customers waiting in a line that went out the door and across the sidewalk, not to mention the foam art she is expected to create on each and every craft coffee.
It was in that moment that I remembered that I had a choice. How would I respond to a carefully planned day that was going anything but how I had planned?
For some reason, in that moment, on that day, in that coffee shop, the better angels of my nature got the best of me. Literally. Which meant that the world within my reach got the best of me too. I took a step back, a deep breath, and just as I was about to head to the back of the line, the woman who had taken my order realized that I hadn’t gotten my sandwich. Apparently someone else had grabbed it. Looking at the menu board I said, “Looks like you’re out of bacon, too. How about sausage instead?” I said with an actual, genuine smile. She smiled back, apologized profusely, as did the young barista, and before long I had a hot-fresh-out-of-the-oven breakfast sandwich, and some freshly brewed dark roast. And the sausage was even better than bacon. Go figure.
That was the day when my keyboard failed, no writing got done, they ran out of bacon, and it took a little longer to get my coffee. While it didn’t turn out as the day I had planned, it was the day that I chose.
Now, the next day when my carefully planned and much needed workout on the treadmill didn’t happen because of technical difficulties, I never knew the not-so-better angels of my nature loved the F-word so much.
Like I said, it’s a choice.
